What’s more poignant than an unopened letter, with all its needs unanswered and its expressions unseen? It’s a missive made for intrigue, as well as an invitation to voyeurism few could resist.
Small wonder director Keith Maitland and veteran film producer Ed Pressman centered their new documentary, Dear Mr Brody, on a trove of unread letters that came into Pressman’s possession and that he found so compelling, he has preserved them for more than five decades now. “Each letter is a life,” the producer said. “Opening them is like peeking behind a curtain into somebody’s private story,” Maitland added.
In this case, there are tens of thousands of them – all inspired by the same event. The epistolary explosion occurred at the start of 1970 during a media frenzy that quickly fizzled into forgotten history. Fifty-two years ago, a shaggy-haired 21-year-old from suburban New York named Michael Brody Jr organized a press conference to announce his intent to give away his entire inheritance (a purported $25m) by distributing it among all those souls in need. The only thing potential beneficiaries had to do to qualify for part of the money was to send a letter to Brody explaining why they were worthy.
Reporters at the time could easily verify that Brody did indeed come from significant wealth, as heir to a margarine fortune. But just how much money he had coming to him, and his true motivation for giving it all away, was far from clear. Regardless, the outlandishness of his promise, and the tsunami of entreaties that followed, inspired massive coverage, including a front-page article in the New York Times and a profile on Walter Cronkite’s powerful TV news show. It helped that Brody fit the ideal image of the earnest hippie of the day, especially when paired with his doe-eyed young wife, Renee. “Together, they looked camera ready for an album cover,” said Maitland.
In fact, RCA Records signed them to a deal that resulted in a single (a cover of Dylan’s You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, backed by a Brody original, titled The War is Over). The couple even got to perform a song on the top entertainment program of the day, The Ed Sullivan Show. The more garish elements of Brody’s story, which became increasingly crazy and disturbing as they unfolded, lend the documentary intrigue. But the emotional content of the letters, and the stories behind them, wind up turning Dear Mr Brody into a surprisingly nuanced and moving peek into the human soul.
It’s those elements that both inspired Pressman to preserve the notes and Maitland to create a film around them. “Normally, cartons of unopened letters are just rubbish,” Pressman said. “My wife would constantly say, ‘get rid of these boxes!’ And some of the letters were pretty superficial. But others were very deep and thought-provoking.”
How a large number of those letters came into Pressman’s possession speaks to the theatrical nature of the story. A pioneer of independent movie production starting with some of the early films of Brian De Palma, Pressman was always on the hunt for material suitable for the big screen. Intrigued by the improbability of Brody’s tale, he acquired the letters in the 70s as research material for a possible dramatization. A screenplay was commissioned and actor Richard Dreyfuss was attached to play the title role. But the project never got off the ground. Neither did another proposed work based on Brody’s life written by one of his childhood friends.
More than 40 years passed before the story attracted new interest. Pressman’s associate, Melissa Robyn Glassman, became fascinated by the letters and decided to inaugurate a new Brody biopic. For pitch materials, she hired an old friend, photographer Sarah Wilson, to shoot a collage of the missives. Things changed direction, however, once Wilson’s husband (director Maitland) saw the letters and became obsessed. “My first instinct was to ask what happened to the people who wrote them?” he said. “Did they survive their travails and achieve their dreams? Did those aspiring entrepreneurs start that business? Did the children wind up taking care of their grandparents?”
Maitland felt the scope of the letters could best be captured in a documentary. “The range of them would be difficult to portray in fictionalized form,” he said. “But a documentary could lean into that by tracking down some of the people who’d written them.”
Finding them, 50 years on, turned out to be no mean feat. The documentarians began their search by looking through old school records and land and vehicle ownership certificates. But, Maitland said, “a lot of these people were writing from abject poverty so they didn’t leave much of a paper trail”.
More, many of the writers had died over the past five decades. Others specifically wrote at the end of their letters, “Please don’t tell anyone about this.” Maitland said he honored all those written requests, except in one case where a woman’s daughter said it was OK to have her late mother’s letter read on camera.
Once the documentarians hit pay dirt and started to locate lots of writers, many shunned them, assuming they were being targeted for a scam. Others simply didn’t want to look back at a time in their lives of deep need. Luckily, many were eager to make the trip back. When some of them read their old words aloud on film, they’re moved to tears.
In looking through hundreds of letters, Maitland estimated that about 70% of the writers expressed a genuine need. Some of the writers didn’t even ask for money for themselves but instead simply encouraged Brody to keep going with his mission. As for Brody’s intent with the giveaway, Maitland believes it was largely sincere. He also believes it was profoundly naïve in a way that echoed common hippie ideals of the day. Likewise, the messianic aspect of his mission offered a benign corollary to the preposterous promises cult leaders tended to make in that era. It also mirrored the many dramatic depictions of freely distributed wealth, from the 1950s American TV series The Millionaire to the 1969 film The Magic Christian.
On a personal level, Brody’s act reflected psychological issues that dated back to his childhood. His mother died when he was very young and his father, whom Maitland describes as “kind of a playboy”, was largely absent from his life. Friends said that Brody was profoundly lonely as a teenager and wealth did little to ease that. “Even with money, he knew that you could have a hole in your heart,” said Maitland. “That’s what he was trying to fill (with this event).”
Almost as soon as he made his announcement, things started to go off the rails, exacerbated by the recreational drugs Brody was using at the time, a profound lack of sleep and the orgy of media attention that both inflated and mocked him. The film reveals far more upsetting things about Brody’s life from that time and afterwards. But, Maitland noted, he did wind up giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars to deserving people. The director believes Brody’s act gave many people an important vehicle for expression they otherwise wouldn’t have had. “When we opened the letters, we kept seeing people writing ‘thank you for what you’re doing,’” Maitland said. “They’d write ‘even if you don’t send me money, I feel better just because I wrote all this down.’ Michael held up a mirror to people and gave them the opportunity to look in it.”
While that look may not have lasted long, it did spread wide. Maitland estimates that up to half a million letters were sent, though many were lost or destroyed over time. More than 30,000 of them are in Pressman’s trove, while another 150,000 remain in a storage unit owned by Brody’s son. Among Pressman’s letters, the film-makers opened and read over 12,000 for consideration in the film.
Maitland believes the missives have historical value since they capture a specific time and mindset in the culture. Columbia University clearly agrees because it has accepted Pressman’s donation of his letters for their public archive. Maitland said that his team dismissed other archives that had expressed interest in the letters because they insisted that they remain pristinely unopened. By contrast, Columbia will allow any member of the public to “sign in as a researcher, put on a pair of white gloves and continue opening letters,” Maitland said. “I really look forward to hearing what people find. We’ve always said that the best letter, the one that’s going to change everything, is still waiting to be opened.”
Dear Mr Brody is released at the Quad in NYC and the Laemmle Monica in LA on 4 March and on Discovery+ later this year with a UK date to be announced
